and they say that online dating is bad
by mirai3k
Summary: Four times Arthur's colleagues try to fix him up with various people in various ways and the one time it sort of works out. Arthur/Everyone. Arthur/Eames


**title:** and they say that online dating is bad  
**characters/pairings:** Arthur/everyone to varying degrees, mostly one-sided (Nash, Yusuf, Saito, Fischer). Arthur/Eames. Dom/Mal.  
**rating: **barely pg-13?  
**notes:** written for zeto on lj for the help_pakistan fandom auction and a prompt involving Arthur being set up on various blind dates with Nash, Saito, Yusuf, Robert, etc, until he meets Eames.  
**summary: ** He has decided they are much worse than his actual family. Surely, this has to count as workplace harassment somewhere.

x

**i.**

He's got his head bent over a miniature model, another maze, another dream level, one of Araidne's this time. He works through every square inch, noting down all the anomalies and loopholes, committing them to memory. Their next job isn't to be executed for weeks, five to be exact, but Arthur prefers to be the first to familiarize himself with the plan of the dreamscape. He likes to guide them through it _his _way regardless of who the Architect is or whose head they're diving into.

There's a clang somewhere in the distance and a loud echo of, "You _really_ need to get out more." And it's Ariadne, making him lose count of-

"Because, I mean, it's Saturday night. Even Dom and Mal are out dancing."

He pinches the bridge of his nose but doesn't take his eyes off the worktop. "And why are you not with them?" What he means is, _why are you here_, but to say that out loud to Ariadne would be suicide. They've had long talks over lots of alcohol about his control issues-rather, she has usually been the one on the conversing end and he's been on the staunchly denying end of things but it really amounts to the same thing.

"Because they're worried about you and sent me to see to it." She pulls the chair across from him, shrugs off the bright purple blazer that matches the scarf, and makes herself comfortable. "Turned out mom and dad were right."

He flips the notebook shut and resigns himself to the reality that he won't be getting anymore done with a slightly tipsy and very chatty Ariadne hovering overhead. He figures he may as well humour her. "Worried?"

"Yes, worried that you were being boring, that one day we would find you decomposing all alone in this warehouse, as stiff as your starched shirts and your neckties." She's on her feet again, blazer hooked on a thumb over her shoulder, and tugging at his arm with her other hand. "Come on, I know a _great _place."

"But the _plans-_"

"Can wait! Jesus. We have a month, Arthur. Come on, come on, _come on_."

He flicks off the light switch and looks back over his shoulder with a frown. He likes his Saturday nights just fine.

They're working out of New York City these days so she hails a cab in no time and manages to haul him into some new lounge in Soho he's never heard of. And in a matter of minutes, she finds them seats and tells him there's someone she thinks he should meet.

He's about to say something that's halfway in between _you've got to be kidding me _and _this should be interesting_ when Ariadne waves at a dim corner and a pale man with far too much hair-product joins them. Sweating profusely, he introduces himself as Nash and holds out a clammy hand for Arthur when Ariadne mentions he is her ex's big brother.

Arthur has some self-preservation in him yet and so he shakes this Nash fellow's hand politely. Nash and Ariadne make conversation for something like a half hour, snatches of which Arthur catches, bits about Tribeca architecture and projects in the area. This is when he discovers that Nash is also an architect, the real kind, but Arthur is still too much in his really-truly-not-wanting-to-be-here headspace that it doesn't do much to affect Arthur's opinion of him. Admittedly, the three offers Nash has made to buy him drinks may have played some part in that as well.

He manages to make a clean break faking an urgent email from Mal and Ariadne, looking dismayed, bids Nash goodbye for the both of them and follows Arthur out.

"What happened?"

"You set me up. I cannot believe _you set me up_."

"Arthur-"

"A blind date? _Your ex-boyfriend's brother?_"

"But he's _sweet_."

"Not the word I had in mind." Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose. "Let's just get out of here."

**ii.**

The next Saturday, Dom and Mal introduce Arthur to a friend and old colleague of theirs who will be helping with this job. His name is Yusuf and he's a chemist who has worked with them for years before they met Arthur or so the story goes.

He's a decent enough guy if a little too enthusiastic when it comes to recruiting volunteers to try out his newest concoctions. Arthur likes to be in the know about the most effective mixtures for every job they undertake and so he finds himself sticking around the makeshift lab Yusuf's got going in a local basement. The basement itself belongs to a man who's always got this hat pulled low over his eyes and sits silently in the corner each time Arthur has come by. Yusuf says it's best not too ask too many questions and Arthur, for the most part, complies.

"So, how was he?" Mal asks the next morning when Arthur shows up for breakfast with the Cobbs. There's a suggestive undertone somewhere in there and Arthur doesn't have to feign confusion because that would be completely unnecessary.

"Informative?" Arthur narrows his eyes. "He's working on an extended-release solvent to triple our time under."

"So I take it he didn't offer you any fancy cocktails then," Dom chimes in, kissing the tip of Mal's nose and taking a seat. "He mixes some mean drinks, that Yusuf. Remember that time in Kiev?"

Mal laughs that tinkling laugh of hers and Dom chuckles along at some distant memory of a private joke that Arthur should probably ask about or take offense at but then he thinks better of it. No need for them to misinterpret polite curiousity as interest.

(To his credit, Yusuf is pretty fucking brilliant and Arthur likes fucking brilliance in more ways than one but no, this is not the time and place, and really, he has conceded to the reality that in his life, the times and places for such things are few and far between.)

"No," Arthur says, apropos of nothing. "I don't think I want to know."

"He's a darling and a gentleman," Mal practically purrs, "just so you know. Always has been."

"Really, _really _don't want to know."

**iii.**

He doesn't know who started it or where it came from, this ridiculous notion that Arthur cannot take care of himself when it comes to his social life, can't know what's best for him. _Really_, he thinks, reminds himself that he is mostly the reason this team is alive and sickeningly wealthy and mostly untouchable, because he can't remind them of the fact without coming across as a proper douchebag. He loves them like he loves his family, maybe even more, but no. _Just no._ There are lines.

The following week, they meet a friend of their mark.

His name is Robert Fischer and the man has got the most gorgeous blue eyes Arthur has ever seen and Arthur will give him that.

He also seems to have gotten the big-eyed vulnerability thing down pat, if Arthur was into that, and maybe, he thinks, it's a bit of a shame that he isn't. Just maybe, he wonders, very absently and without sparing a lot of mental capacity for it, if he could be.

At their first meeting, however, Robert Fischer seems to be unable to take his eyes off of Dom to the point where he almost looks a little dismayed upon catching a glimpse of Dom's left hand. It could be the sight of the wedding band or the way Dom keeps fiddling with his phone or the way Mal shows up twenty minutes later and kisses her husband on each cheek. It could be anything, Arthur thinks, and it's hard to not roll his eyes. All the pretty ones go for Dom. First Mal, than Ariadne and her ridiculous schoolgirl crush. It was completely unfair.

At any rate, it's not like Arthur to mix business with pleasure. He tells himself this off the bat when Fischer comes into the picture. Soon enough, he doesn't really need the reminders either.

As it turns out, Fischer's too high maintainence and apparently Arthur dodged a bullet there. Arthur finds this out through Ariadne after she dates the man a month. Arthur almost asks her if they bonded over pining for a certain married man even if only to get even with the crap she put him through with Nash. He decides against it, or rather, decides to hold that card for later, resourceful Point Man that he is.

**iv. **

Then there's an old client of theirs who sends Arthur a bottle of whiskey from Macallan's Fine and Rare Collection. It's something like sixty years old and forty-thousand dollars a bottle and Arthur likes his whiskey but it's a gesture eerily reminiscent of the man's classical seduction techniques. The note that comes with it is a careful scrawl of:

_I hear you are seeking some excitement in your life_. _- S_

And it may just be the last straw.

He nearly knocks down the door to the Cobbs' hotel room but they seem to be expecting him. Mal lets him in as Dom's handing a cup of espresso to Ariadne, and Mal's opening her mouth to speak when Arthur cries out, "Saito? _Really?_ Are you _fucking serious_?"

Ariadne looks like she's stifling a laugh and trying not to spill her dark roast all over herself whereas Dom's got another cup and saucer ready for Arthur.

"No," Arthur says. "No, no, no. Also, never again." He's about to storm out in a huff when he remembers the most important part, what he came here to do. "And I quit. So goodbye."

**v.**

Of course they don't take his resignation seriously. They don't take anything seriously.

He has decided they are much worse than his actual family. Surely, this has to count as workplace harassment somewhere.

Mal calls him bright and early and tells him he's to help recruit a forger. No one told him about a forger or that they would even be needing one for this job.

Mal explains to him later that after Arthur had graciously left them the previous evening, they had continued with business as usual. It turned out that they had miscalculated, that Mal was right and Dom was wrong, "As always, really," and they would be needing a forger after all.

Arthur tries to mentally compile the list of those he can think of from past jobs. They are all more than half-decent. He has a name on the tip of his tongue when Mal holds up a finger to take a call fron Dom.

"Brilliant!" she says, and, "No, no, let me." In a blur of motion, she keys something into her phone and gets a buzz in return within seconds. She rings Dom back, all smiles. "He'll be here tomorrow evening."

"Who will be here tomorrow evening?" asks Arthur, knowing the answer already. Their forger, _of course_.

"I do not think that you have met him," says Mal, "but I think you will rather like him."

x

His name is Eames. He only gives a last name because that is apparently how he operates and if that annoys Arthur to no end, what annoys him more is that now he has to work this forger into the schema he'd spent weeks laying out.

Still, he's used to working with what he's been given. He tells himself that he will make do with what he has even if it involves a strange man in paisley and centure-old courduroy who seems just as fond of Arthur as Arthur is of him, which is not very much at all.

They manage to coexist in one way or another right up until the night before the job. The team assembles in the warehouse and they're going over the timeline in a dress rehearsal of sorts, and Eames chooses _that _moment to show off to Mal and Dom and throw in ideas that run completely counterpoint to the way Arthur has laid things out for weeks.

Of course, Mal _oohs _and _aahs_ and Dom gives Arthur a clap on the shoulder and asks him to tweak their plans according to and to accomodate Eames' adjustments-which, admittedly, make _sense _in the grand scheme of things, but it's the principle of the thing.

x

He gets under Arthur's skin and then some, all throughout the administration of the solvent, the set-up of the PASIV, and then in the dreamscape itself, which in this case is Strand Campus of King's College London.

Both Arthur and Ariadne had done extensive research in making it a hundred and ten percent accurate but Eames had handwaved their work, said he knew the nooks and tunnels and passageways after spending half a decade on the grounds in ways that they never could.

As they stand in a tube station that hasn't been used in nearly a century, Arthur gives up and goes along with it begrudgingly because, so far, Eames has been right.

It's only when the job is over that he tells this Eames that they need to have a meeting and discuss like grown-ups how things are done because in this team, they have this thing called a plan, and structure, and, "I understand you forgers are all about spontaneity and being unpredictable but that's not how we do it here when we have four other minds riding in the balance."

"I didn't realize the meeting had started," and Eames pulls out the pen from behind his ear, starts scribbling something quickly on the palm of his hand.

And Arthur doesn't know what to do with any of this. He can't work with a loose cannon who has the attention span of a goldfish and he can't even go to Mal or Dom because _that _had gone so well last time.

"What are you writing?"

"Just a sketch, an underground map," says Eames, and now that Arthur can see, it's a loop intersected with some horizontal lines. "Toronto's," Eames adds. "Should be helpful for next time. You've heard about the job, I'm sure. Carry on then."

"The job? There will be no job. At this rate, at least, _we_ are no longer going to be working on the same job."

"...if we take the loop to Dundas Square...no, no, it would be faster with the Bloor Line," Eames go on to mutter to himself.

"Are you even _listening?_"

"Sorry, love. You were speaking. Yes, there will be a job and yes, you will be coming. We fly to Montreal on Tuesday, pick up some supplies, lie low until the following week, stop over in Toronto. There's a great chemist there, friend of Yusuf's, and then I do a few days of shadowing the mark's family in Edmonton, get what I need-"

"_Eames!_ This is-I'm done, okay? First thing tomorrow-"

"You're going to go to Mal? Because we can't work together? Quite frankly, I'm a little disappointed, Arthur. I'd heard such charming things about you. She also said you could use some company in that lonely little head of yours."

"You've _got _to be joking me." There was no goddamned way this whole thing was just another way for them to set him him for a disaster _again_. "And I don't need the company, thank you very much."

"Oh I daresay it was more than just about you, being _my_ employment and all. Though sorry to say, you've been a bit of a let down."

"_I'm _a let down?" Arthur asks, incredulous. "I'm," _keeping things together, _he wants to say,but he stops, tries to find the right word when Eames cuts him off.

"Very likely working too hard and not getting any time to enjoy the ride at all," Eames supplies, sounding more like Ariadne than anyone but Ariadne should. The off thing is that he's only half teasing now. "They know you're keeping them together. I haven't been here two weeks and I know it. And they know that you put all of yourself into your work because you_ want _to but really, darling, live a little."

Arthur snorts a laugh and wants to say,_ it's not that easy_, but there's something in how Eames manages to be five paces ahead of everyone and still have a laugh at the end of the day makes it look all too easy. It's misleading, he thinks. It has to be.

"Come out with me," Eames says, voice low. "I've heard the stories-and I would have kept the Macallan's, by the way." Arthur feels an indignant circle of heat around his collar. Did _everyone _know about that now?

Part of Arthur thinks it's high time he got asked out like a normal person and it probably can't get worse. "Alright," he says. "Just this once."

Eames gets to his feet and, taking Arthur's hand and getting little resistance for once, pulls him up as well.

"No crafty schemes to get you into my bed," Eames smirks. "Or not tonight anyway."

x

They go once, then more than once. They go on until they lose track of numbers and lose track of time.

They go on to use some of those crafty schemes Eames has talked about and even some of Arthur's, and then there are those they make up along the way on the spot.

Arthur still maintains that he cannot just wing itwhen it comes to his work but he's finding that it's not an entirely terrible approach when it comes to other things.


End file.
